Lincoln Premiere: Lincoln’s top sedan of the late 1950s

The Lincoln Premiere was a luxury car sold by Lincoln for the 1956–1960 model years. It sat above the Lincoln Capri and below the Continental Mark II, and for a short time was the largest top-level four-door sedan Lincoln offered against Cadillac, Imperial and Packard.

Lincoln Premiere at a glance

Based on one source, the English Wikipedia article on the Premiere.

History of the Lincoln Premiere

The Premiere was introduced in 1956 as an upscale version of the Lincoln Capri. It used the 368 cu in Lincoln Y-block V8, measured about 5,700 mm long and weighed 1,976 kg, at a base price of $4,601. It was the top Lincoln-badged model, clearly different from the much dearer and more conservative Continental Mark II, and it competed with the Cadillac Series 62, Imperial Crown Coupe and Packard Patrician. In 1956 Lincoln built 19,619 hardtop coupes, 19,465 four-door sedans and 2,447 convertibles.

Lincoln emphasised exclusivity with a large colour palette: 20 single colours and 34 two-tone combinations in 1956, rising to 18 singles and 76 two-tones for 1957. The Premiere’s styling followed the Capri’s borrowings from the Mercury XM-800 and Lincoln Futura concept cars. Factory air conditioning ran through clear plastic ducts to the roof, visible through the rear window, in the manner of an aircraft cabin, and four-way power seats were standard. The front suspension was independent with a stabiliser bar, and for 1957 the driving light moved from the bumper to sit below the sealed-beam headlamp, giving the appearance of stacked twin lamps that Lincoln called Quadra-Lite.

The 1958–1960 Premiere was among the first Lincolns built at the new Wixom plant and used a unibody platform, Lincoln’s first since the Lincoln-Zephyr. Although brochures still presented Continental as a separate make, the car shared its body with that year’s Lincoln. The Premiere sat between the Capri and the Continental in trim, with a conventional roof instead of the Continental’s reverse-angle power rear window. The 1958 car was larger than contemporary Cadillac Sixty-Specials and Imperial Crowns, with canted headlamps and heavily scalloped wings that many thought excessive even for the decade, and its 1,603 mm front and 1,600 mm rear shoulder room set a Lincoln record that still stands.

The styling of these cars came from an unusually deep bench of designers: George W. Walker was in charge of Ford styling, Elwood Engel and John Najjar worked together on the 1958 car and its 1959 update, Don Delarossa led the 1960 revision, and Alex Tremulis ran the advanced studio, whose La Tosca concept gave the 1958 front end its “slant-eyed monster” nickname. Ford lost more than $60 million between 1958 and 1960, partly through developing what was then the largest unibody car ever produced. The 1958 Lincoln sold only 10,275 cars at an average price of $5,483, hit by the American recession, and the Premiere was replaced by the 1961 Continental sedan. The name has since been revived as a Lincoln trim level.

Design and features

• Top Lincoln trim: positioned above the Capri and below the Continental Mark II.
• Aircraft-style air conditioning: cool air fed to the roof through clear plastic ducts.
• Quadra-Lite lamps: the 1957 stacked headlamp look.
• Unibody from 1958: the first Lincoln unibody since the Zephyr, built at Wixom.
• Record shoulder room: 1,603 mm at the front and 1,600 mm at the rear.

Lincoln Premiere versions

• 1956–1957 Premiere: hardtop coupe, four-door sedan and convertible on the Capri-based body.
• 1958–1960 Premiere: unibody cars sharing the Lincoln body, with a conventional roof.
• Later use of the name: revived as a trim level on modern Lincolns.

The Premiere was the upscale version of the Lincoln Capri and shared its showroom with the Lincoln Continental; it was replaced by the 1961 Continental sedan. More Lincolns are in the Lincoln collection.

Sources

• Lincoln Premiere, English Wikipedia: history, prices, production, styling